elementary OS Luna says Hello World

Two days ago, I wrote of a countdown appearing on the elementary OS website. Tonight, the countdown ended, and we finally got to know what it was all about. As many of us, including myself, were suspecting, we were counting down to the release of elementary OS Luna.
“Why is this special?”, you might ask. Well, as opposed to some other distributions, this single release took several years to complete, because the developers wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfection. No six month release cycle where the ISO’s have to be released no matter how unstable they are. Whenever you’d ask the elementary developers when Luna would be released, you’d always get the same answer: “When it’s ready.”
And the waiting has paid off, in my opinion.
elementary OS is an extremely polished and well-optimised experience. Rather than shipping whichever applications are the most popular at the time, instead they chose to develop their core applications themselves. As a result, they perfectly match the look and feel of the rest of the operating system, and are equally well-optimised.
For the full story on how elementary OS Luna came into existence, head over to their blog. Or if you’d rather just download the ISO and try it out for yourself, it can be found on their home page. I suggest you consider throwing a few coins their way. In my opinion it’s the only Linux distribution that has differentiated itself enough, yet without giving up its core philosophy in the process, to justify asking for money. But, by all means, judge for yourself. Because as always, it’s beautiful, speedy, open and free.